I love a good pun and the title of this post probably should have been “snow time like the present” but I’m also all about accuracy. How confused would you be if I called this post ‘present’ then went all throwback to last Friday? Yes very confused, accuracy is important.

Now how about that throwback? This was a high-high-highlight of the trip so far (up there with elephants) – I went SKIING in JAPAN!
It was the last day in Asahikawa so definitely ended the trip with a bang. We left poor wittle hungover Elise in bed while the rest of us headed up to Kamui Ski Links one of the best fields on Hokkaido and only 30 minutes from home! There’s a much small field 10 mins away too, these guys are so lucky!
Ai had spare pants, I had a jacket and Evan leant me a shark mask, to fit my personality…

The added bonus of skiing in Japan is that it’s cheap. For a half day pass and hire it was 6100 yen, yen know that’s only $70NZD!

This ski field beats NZ also because it had a skiing dog (RIP) who wore booties.

Time to hit the slopes. As many of you may know I’m not a crazy competent skier but I’m pretty game and had surprising muscle memory from last time, thanks The Rock for those lessons, so up the gondolas to the top we went!

These two fabulous people did runs with me all day and were forever patient when I took my sweet time on the ‘cliffs’, such gems. Cliffs could be defined as your average steeper bit.

The view from the top was… Well… Pretty tops!

A Canadian guy I met in Chiang Mai Provence nick named Japan, Jap-pow-pow which I think is rather catchy, sounds all cool skier (me saying that automatically makes me an uncool skier, but I’m not a cool anything so I’m ok with this) and it was powder powder everywhere! Powder is tricky business, I’ll tell you that for free, got stuck sinking a few times but after that once ol’ confident Croft came back it was mega fun!

During best run of the day selfies, I’ve been hanging out with Elise far too much selfies.

We had tried to convince Elise to come and just try out skiing and then retire to the cafe if the going got tough, if she’d seen this view though I can only imagine things would have turned out differently. Also, if you’ve ever wondered what snow on icicles looks like, it looks like fluffy if-this-drops-it-will-kill-you long clouds.

This was an amazing day and I would have taken a trillion more photos had I not been busying myself skiing, selfish I know, but there are a few videos floating around. My personal fave is the one where I manage a very special bail then Evan filming bails and see’s stars. He fell on his butt so hard he saw stars. How does that happen? My googles fogged with tears of laughter, I’m a good caring friend. Here’s Steve in the process of face planting snow as we head for the car and for some amazing karmatoc reason a whole bus of school children witnessed it and laughed, perfecto!

This day was too much fun and a perfect end to the trip. I can’t thank Ai and Evan enough for welcoming us into their home, sharing Asahikawa with us (we’d have been seriously screwed without Ai) and hanging out with me all day on the slopes! It was great to get to know old friends again and make new ones in the process- till next time Asahikawa, we’ll be back.
Next stop Toky, Toky, Tokyo!
We had one night in this crazy city and here’s a shaky montage of what we got up to.

As you may have deduced, we went on a lot of public transport, saw very little of the city and struggled to interpret Japanese menus. It was probably a good thing we settled on 7-11 judging by the Japanese hotel breakfast the next morning, are those meatballs?

I’m going to let y’all in on a little summin summin about Elise, she loves Hello Kitty. Not just your standard love, she down right L.O.V.E.S the cat. She even has a Hello Kitty hair catcher for the shower… (I just looked down as I wrote this, she’s wearing Hello Kitty socks!! Point proven and so topical).
Any who, there’s this place in Tokyo Sanrio Puroland, it’s pretty much the land where every cartoon character has their own land. Naturally Elise wouldn’t pipe down about Hello Kitty Land so Ai and I (lol) went out of our way make sure Elise could get there, of course this land just happened to be no where near the airports or airtrain services. We calculated with no delays that she’d get 20 minutes inside the place before we had to go. I was stressy, Elise was as excited as a 4 year old for Christmas!

The place opens at 9.30 am at 9.40 Elise bought her ticket and headed through the doors.

She promptly returned 3minutes later. Turns out the actual park doesn’t open till 10am and she’d been asked to leave and join the queue with all the other kids and their parents… It was time for the airport but,
“At least we tried”
“You would have had more regrets of we hand tried”
“Oh thank you Lauren for trying” (in 3rd person)
“How pretty is the outside?”
“Get a photo with the Hello Kitty Statue!”
“Ok, miss positive can we please hurry a little to the train”
– Actual quotes from the scene that followed. Elise’s remarks have been omitted.

Bags packed, it was time for our 26 hour journey to New York!!

I’m so glad to finally be up to sharing New York with you! I’m going to miss japan though, it was an awesome place and I can’t wait to explore more of the country in the future. Just a tid bit of advice, if you’re ever travelling and have the option of going through Guangzhou China airport, don’t. Avoid that place like you would the plague or non-lot alleyway. They don’t have trolleys, reasonably priced items or free wifi, shivers.

L x